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Patients needing a kidney transplant, for example, may not be able to use laparoscopic kidney
surgery.
A laparoscopic kidney surgery is much easier on the patient than a traditional surgery procedure. Because it requires smaller
incisions--often less than a tenth of traditional surgery incisions--recovery time for patients who undergo kidney surgery is
greatly reduced. Plus, there are fewer opportunities for infection and less chance of complications. If laparoscopic kidney
surgery is appropriate for you, it may be the best option. Your doctor will be able to tell you whether laparoscopic kidney
surgery is appropriate in your circumstances, and, if so, whether it actually is the best choice for you.
Because, unfortunately, laparoscopic kidney surgery is not appropriate for everyone. Patients needing a kidney transplant, for
example, may not be able to use laparoscopic kidney surgery. There are inroads being made into laparoscopic nephrectomies and
laparoscopic donor nephrectomies, but these are not yet common or available in all hospitals. Also, high-risk patients may
require traditional open surgery. This includes diabetic patients and obese patients where the patient's obesity may make it
difficult to maintain pneumoperitoneum.
So what exactly is laparoscopic kidney surgery? Rather than creating large incisions that allow the surgeons to directly
operate on the kidney, laparoscopic surgery uses a small tube with a camera and small surgical tools to remove tumors and operate
on the kidney. In the case of cancer, this may include laparoscopic cryoablation, where tumors on the kidney are frozen. These
are typically some of the least invasive surgeries available.
Laparoscopic donor nephrectomies are procedures where living kidney donors can have the kidney to be donated removed via a
similar laparoscopic procedure. The extraction is, naturally, somewhat larger than incisions for laparoscopic cryoablation or
other laparoscopic kidney surgeries, at 5-6 cm, but still smaller than traditional open surgery incisions, which are
approximately 8 to 9 *inches*. The difference, as you can see, is substantial.
What is the difference in rate of survival, or is there one? In fact, patients treated with laparoscopic kidney surgery showed
the same rate of survival five years later. As far as actual long term results go, there doesn't seem to be much of a difference
one way or the other. The main difference is in short-term recovery time and hospital stays for the patient; laparoscopic surgery
does reduce the time it takes to recover from the actual surgery.
As laparoscopic nephrectomies and laparoscopic donor nephrectomies become more common, they are slowly becoming the kidney
surgery of choice for most patients, and they are being offered in more hospitals. In the near future, there is a good chance
that most kidney surgery will be performed via laparoscope.
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